A floor mounted toilet bowl rests on the surface of the floor. This surface may be wood, concrete or other material. The surface of the flooring in the usual case is not perfectly smooth and consequently it is necessary to provide some type of gasket or sealing material between the bottom of the toilet bowl, or the walls of the outlet of the toilet bowl, and the surface of the floor to prevent leakage and maintain a high degree of sanitation.
Various gaskets and seals have been used or proposed.
A annular wax ring is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,821,820. This patent also discloses an annular polyethylene ring.
Typically seals are positioned between the outlet of the toilet bowl and the flanged top surface of the waste or soil pipe extending through an opening in the floor, U.S. Pat. No. 911,486 and U.S. Pat. No. 3,568,222, the latter of which discloses a rubber seal.
In other cases, the seal has been provided by a plumbing fixture setting compound which may be manually applied from bulk, or it may be preformed by molding it into a ring prior to setting the toilet, Federal Specification A-A-3110, July 1997.
The disclosures of the above citations are incorporated herein by reference.
Briefly, the present invention comprises a generally annular sealing ring for positioning between the toilet bowel and the surface of the floor, the seal being positioned at any of the conventional locations and being shaped in effective configuration, said annular sealing ring being novel in that it is comprises polyethylene foam characterized by resilience and the ability to recover substantially its original shape and thickness after compression loading.
The invention further includes the combination of a toilet bowl resting on a floor surface wherein a generally annular sealing ring is disposed between said toilet bowl and floor surface with at least some of the weight of the toilet bowl resting on said sealing ring;
the improvement wherein said sealing ring is generally planar, and has inner and outer diameters, and has any effective toilet sealing ring configuration, said annular sealing ring being comprising polyethylene foam characterized by resilience and the ability to recover substantially its original shape and thickness after compression loading.
The new toilet seal has excellent application for residential and commercial floor mounted toilets. The seal is basically a material that is waterproof and lightweight. A new material is used for the toilet ring to seal the connection at the floor. The invention makes the job more user friendly and it makes the job cleaner and easier.
The seal material is unicellular extruded polyethylene foam. It is non-biodegradable and very flexible, returning to its original form after use. It can be removed with ease usually in one piece. It is dry unlike a wax ring which is very sticky and messy.
The unicellar polyethylene foam is commercially available from Sealed Air Corporation, Packaging Products Division, 19-01 State Highway 208, Fair Lawn, N.J. These materials are designated by the xe2x80x9cCellu-Cushionxe2x80x9d trademark and come in densities of from 1.2 to 2.2 pounds per cubic foot, all of which are applicable to this invention. Other suitable foams also supplied by Seal Air Corporation bear the trademarks xe2x80x9cPolyamxe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9cPlankxe2x80x9d. These range in density from 1.3 to 9.8 pounds per cubic foot. According to Sealed Air Corporation, these foams are made with the benefit of a flammable hydrocarbon blowing agent which is removed prior to shipment.